Sources & references

The numbers and claims we use on the marketing site, with the studies behind them. We round and we paraphrase — but everything links back to source so you can decide for yourself.

1. 1
   5–15% revenue lost to uncaptured variations and out-of-scope work on service jobs.

   Industry estimate. Project-management research consistently finds scope creep among the leading causes of projects missing their original goals, and Harvest’s scope-creep cost calculator puts unrecovered out-of-scope work at up to 50% of project revenue in service businesses. There’s no NZ-specific study that pins this to a single decimal, so we give it as a range. Sources: PMI, Pulse of the Profession (general scope-creep findings); Harvest scope-creep cost calculator, getharvest.com.

2. 2
   Only 1% of service businesses successfully bill for every out-of-scope request.

   From Ignition’s 2025 Agency Pricing & Cash Flow Report, a survey of 273 agency leaders. The research covers service-business agencies rather than trades specifically, but the underlying pattern — how hard it is to capture extra work in the moment — holds either way. Source: Ignition, 2025 Agency Pricing & Cash Flow Report.

3. 3
   $4,500 leakage example from 10 minor changes at $450 each on a fixed-price residential job.

   Our own illustration, not a published study — a realistic picture of how write-offs add up across a handful of small unbilled changes on one job. It mirrors the “death by a thousand cuts” point that NZ trades software vendor NextMinute makes about variations on fixed-price work. Tydra worked example; pattern consistent with NextMinute, “Win Dream Clients & Manage Scope Creep,” nextminute.com.

4. 4
   NZ Building Act 2004 $30k threshold for written contracts on residential building work.

   Under Part 4A of the Building Act 2004 (in force since 1 January 2015), a written contract is legally required for residential building work valued at $30,000 or more (incl. GST), and it must specify how variations are handled. Tydra’s customer-accepted bill PDF is the kind of “in writing” record that supports compliance — but Tydra is not a substitute for a fit-for-purpose building contract. Source: building.govt.nz — Building Act 2004, Part 4A.

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